Viacom’s Comedy Central channel today will launch a new site for the The Daily Show With Jon Stewart that will host nearly 13,000 video clips covering the entire output of the show since it began in 1999. The site will be supported by advertisements.

This is, of course, a response to the presence of many Stewart clips on Youtube and the related $1B copyright-infringement suit. These clips have high value for many people. Not everyone watches Stewart’s show regularly or can even receive the comedy channel. Some don’t even have a television. But some of the segments on the show quickly enter our popular culture, so there is high interest in seeing them.

“The database is searchable by both date and topic, making it a potential bonanza for students of American pop culture. If you want to see what host Jon Stewart has had to say about former First Lady Barbara Bush or ill-fated Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, you can find the clips and put them in context by seeing what else was featured on the same day.
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Going forward, however, Comedy Central plans to tap into the collective intelligence of its fans by allowing them to contribute to the process, a la Wikipedia, the user-created Internet encyclopedia.”

The article mentions that the segments have been tagged by Comedy Central writers. It’s interesting to see these ‘social web’ features, user generated content and tagging, being used for this site.